News tagged with beams of light

Light-Driven Nanorod Could Roll on Water

(PhysOrg.com) -- In a recent study, researchers have examined the possibility of rolling a nanorod on the surface of water. On the macroscale, perhaps the closest analogy might be the sport of logrolling, ...

Nanotechnology / Nanophysics

created Dec 18, 2009 | popularity 4.1 / 5 (10) | comments 1 feature

Physicists build highly efficient 'no-waste' laser

A team of University of California, San Diego researchers has built the smallest room-temperature nanolaser to date, as well as an even more startling device: a highly efficient, "thresholdless" laser that ...

Physics / General Physics

created Feb 08, 2012 | popularity 4.9 / 5 (23) | comments 5 | with audio podcast

Scientists take fresh look at 'faster-than-light' experiment

Scientists who threw down the gauntlet to physics by reporting particles that broke the Universe's speed limit said on Friday they were revisiting their contested experiment.

Physics / General Physics

created Oct 28, 2011 | popularity 4.5 / 5 (22) | comments 146

Nanoscale nonlinear light source created

Not long after the development of the first laser in 1960 scientists discovered that shining a beam through certain crystals produced light of a different color; more specifically, it produced light of exactly ...

Nanotechnology / Nanophysics

created Sep 22, 2011 | popularity 5 / 5 (6) | comments 4 | with audio podcast

Research team develops method to produce large sheets of metamaterials

(PhysOrg.com) -- In an announcement many have been waiting for, a research team from the University of Illinois, has succeeded in figuring out how to produce metamaterials in a size big enough to be useful. ...

Nanotechnology / Nanomaterials

created Jun 15, 2011 | popularity 4.9 / 5 (9) | comments 2 | with audio podcast report

Quantum physics first: Researchers observe single photons in two-slit interferometer experiment

Quantum mechanics is famous for saying that a tree falling in a forest when there's no one there doesn't make a sound. Quantum mechanics also says that if anyone is listening, it interferes with and changes the tree. And ...

Physics / Quantum Physics

created Jun 02, 2011 | popularity 4.9 / 5 (23) | comments 44 | with audio podcast

Scientists build world's first anti-laser

More than 50 years after the invention of the laser, scientists at Yale University have built the world's first anti-laser, in which incoming beams of light interfere with one another in such a way as to perfectly ...

Physics / General Physics

created Feb 17, 2011 | popularity 4.6 / 5 (44) | comments 18 | with audio podcast

Physicists propose quantum entanglement for motion of microscopic objects

Researchers at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) have proposed a new paradigm that should allow scientists to observe quantum behavior in small mechanical systems.

Physics / Quantum Physics

created Dec 21, 2009 | popularity 4.4 / 5 (22) | comments 15

The guiding of light: A new metamaterial device steers beams along complex pathways

Using a composite metamaterial to deliver a complex set of instructions to a beam of light, Boston College physicists have created a device to guide electromagnetic waves around objects such as the corner ...

Physics / Optics & Photonics

created Jul 31, 2009 | popularity 4.5 / 5 (18) | comments 8

Invisibility Cloak Blurs Line Between Magic and Science (w/Video)

(PhysOrg.com) -- The great science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke famously noted the similarities between advanced technology and magic. This summer on the big screen, the young wizard Harry Potter will once ...

Physics / General Physics

created May 01, 2009 | popularity 3.8 / 5 (21) | comments 19

Measuring magnetic fields

(Phys.org) -- Polarized light is a familiar phenomenon, as people who prefer polarized sunglasses can testify. The electric field in a beam of light can vibrate either left-right or up-down, and the scattering ...

Space & Earth / Astronomy

created Apr 09, 2012 | popularity 5 / 5 (3) | comments 0 | with audio podcast

Ultrafast sonograms shed new light on rapid phase transitions

An international team of physicists has developed a method for taking ultrafast 'sonograms' that can track the structural changes that take place within solid materials in trillionth-of-a-second intervals ...

Physics / General Physics

created Mar 08, 2012 | popularity not rated yet | comments 3 | with audio podcast

Virtual ghost imaging: New technique enables imaging even through highly adverse conditions

Ghost imaging (GI), and its even more oddly named cousin virtual ghost imaging (VGI), seem to contradict conventional wisdom by being able to image an object by simply counting photons in a "light bucket." This non-intuitive ...

Physics / General Physics

created Feb 15, 2012 | popularity 4.7 / 5 (7) | comments 1 | with audio podcast

A serendipitous gravitational lens

(PhysOrg.com) -- The path traveled by a light beam will bend in the presence of matter. This remarkable prediction, reached by Einstein in his theory of general relativity, was confirmed by observations of ...

Space & Earth / Astronomy

created Nov 21, 2011 | popularity 4.3 / 5 (6) | comments 3 | with audio podcast

Switching light on and off - with photons

(PhysOrg.com) -- Cornell researchers have demonstrated that the passage of a light beam through an optical fiber can be controlled by just a few photons of another light beam.

Physics / Optics & Photonics

created Nov 09, 2011 | popularity 4.9 / 5 (7) | comments 6 | with audio podcast